Part 2

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.

Up until very recently I worked at a community radio station 4ZZZ, and the Conservatorium — two Meanjin / Brisbane music institutions that couldn’t be more different.

4ZZZ is this grassroots countercultural radio station with a pirate radio spirit. It’s hectic but so satisfying shaping the music culture of the city I live in. It’s really fun to be surrounded by people so into a range of fringe musics. Then the Con is like this music institution focussed on the Western classical canon, which to be honest I don’t care that much for, but I respect the passion and dedication of the kids there going for it, building those skills and lots of them going off trying their own hand at it, breaking some of the rules they’ve been taught and making cool stuff. I’m there working on a research project that’s awesome. It’s about how music making can tangibly decrease inequity in communities.

I’m really lucky to have day jobs about music. But to be honest, 2022 was flat out and I haven’t given myself time to actually do too much music. This year is all about making music, starting with a composing project at La Boite Theatre. When I write music for Obscure Orchestra, my day tends be just playing instruments and combining sounds in my room studio, broken up with a lot of bicycle riding around town letting thoughts percolate. When I’ve written the most music, I’ve had a less hectic work life and gone on day hikes and creek swims, listening to sounds, and letting them filter into instrument playing when I’m back home. I’ve missed it and thankfully I’ll be doing more of it.

As much as I can, I try to compose music outside or in daylight. I don’t love the feeling of being in a lightless bunker or office, and a lot of music studios I’ve been in are exactly that. I’ll ride my bike around the local area, with a backpack of small instruments (mbira, recorder, trumpet, or humming) and record into my phone. Or, I’ll set up a little floor chair and cardboard box table under the clothesline outside, with a small instrument and a laptop.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?

The songs that I’m proudest of like, ‘Birdnest Hair’, ‘Make Everything’ and ‘Welcome To The Neighbourhood’, began with an intensely solitary process of compose-recording the instrumentals, crafting sounds, building and chiseling away at instrument layers, recording and re-recording until I get the right feeling.



For “Birdnest Hair”, I was fiddling around with melodica, mbira, chopsticks on bowls and plates, and I was learning how to bow a saw (I bought one from Mitre 10 and it worked great). I was really happy with that first little chunk but I was stuck on where to go. Then there was this beautiful sun shower outside my bedroom studio, I sat back with the mic recording and captured the rain, and that set the tone for my next moves.



Around that time, some of my best friends had their baby Wednesday and I was so happy and excited for them, and getting to meet this messy, wild, birdnest-haired child inspired the lyrics of the song.

I loved the idea of getting as many voices of cool people in my life to yell “GO GIRL” to cheer on Wednesday on doing life her own wild way. I then got my friend Ash Djokic who embodies a lot of that wild adventurousness in adult form to help put a Play School style rap and animate parts of the music video. That was such a fun song to make.

Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

I think there’s a good reason why my musical life has become more and more community-based over time. Music is too big a thing, too much of a marathon, to not share with the people you love.

I feel ridiculously lucky that 22 people choose to make music with me, that that collaborating artists I love and admire and so happy to join that community. I get to make music with my dearest friends. It’s strange that this wildly communal, shared experience arises from musical material that was generated through some of most solitary composing times in my bedroom studio.

I haven’t fully unpacked the duality of it, but it when a song is finished, arranged and orchestrated with my beautiful orchestrator Fin Nicol-Taylor, it feels like a celebration or graduation for the song and it takes on new life as the ensemble put their magic stamp on it. It’s so satisfying, creating things by both taking self time at my own pace, and to surround myself with shimmering life and friendship.

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

I think music and entertainment has a really important function in our world. Like so so important. People might not always actively seek out articles and essays about identity politics, but entertainment is natural and vital way to start those conversations that help us critique our place in the world, see different people represented, and it’s something we seek out for enjoyment!

In my little microcosm of society, the orchestra itself, it’s been so amazing to see how music have become this glue for magical things to happen. A big part of my music life has become being a facilitator for artists coming together. I’ve found myself, unexpectedly, in this position of being an orchestra director, and it’s been absolute pleasure seeing the Obscure Orchestra form bonds in this safe, fun, cheeky, joyful way.

It’s really easy to just say the words “this is a safe space”, but it takes actually thought and action to make it happen, genuinely appreciating everyone in the room, making everyone feel seen and heard, and just being a human and taking moments to talk about our lives, rather than just being together to “play the notes efficiently” like workers. I think fun and playfulness isn’t just some extra byproduct of people collaborating, it’s a core ingredient.

Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

I grew up around a lot of Buddhist monks and meditative chanting, so I’ve always felt this hypnotic and restorative link to music.

How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?

Hahah! To be honest I’m kind of a simple pleasures, mostly absentminded kind of person and haven’t thought too deeply about this. But my understanding is that the universe and the life arising in it is this wonderfully chaotic random chance combination of stardust, bringing about chaotic and fun life.

Music is an extension of that, it’s chance encounters of sounds and patterns, that kind swirls in a pattern for a while, then bits veer off and create entirely new strange and wonderful combinations.

I wonder what music by extra terrestrials sound like … 🛸

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

I actually really relish the everyday-ness of music, where it can arise in mundane settings. The more we can throw away the idea that making music is some impenetrable undertaking for a special few, the better.

Music should be this everyday, shared and communal part of life! Music does elevate and imbue ideas and feelings, but I’d like more people to feel like they can access it and create it anywhere with anything, like a protest chant, that’s a for everyone, this shared medium for expressing passionate belief.

Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?

Because humans made it! A person, with their endlessly nuances experiences, layers of identity, contradictions, passions, loves and heartbreaks.

All the possible sounds of the world can be harnessed by someone who wants to express a thing. And because of their humanness, that becomes something potent.